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Marriage rates in the US have declined dramatically — they’re the focus of recent books like The Two-Parent Privilege by economist Melissa Kearney and Get Married by Brad Wilcox, of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Meanwhile, fertility has hit record lows, prompting growing concern about demographic decline and spawning an emerging “pronatalist” movement that sees shrinking birth rates as an existential threat. But conversations about these trends have largely remained separate. Marriage researchers tend to focus on relationship formation, family stability, and child outcomes. Pronatalists concentrate on the reasons for delaying or forgoing child birth, and the consequences that may bring. Lately though, more conservatives have argued that marriage penalties in the tax code connect these two issues — and fixing these penalties could help boost the population.  The argument has particular appeal on the right: Fiscal conservatives generally favor reforming existing policies over creating costly new programs, while social conservatives view ending marriage penalties as supporting both wedlock and childbearing. But like the welfare debates of the past, it raises empirical questions about whether benefits actually influence family formation decisions, as well as broader ethical considerations about the government’s role in shaping personal choices. The math on marriage The statistical case for connecting marriage and fertility appears relatively straightforward at first. Married women have significantly higher birth rates than unmarried women, and while both groups have had fewer children in recent decades, married birth rates have declined much less. Ergo, marriage penalty critics argue that policies discouraging marriage — by pushing families above subsidy thresholds or into higher tax brackets — may indirectly suppress birth rates. Take the Earned Income Tax Credit, designed to help low-income workers. When two working people marry, their combined income can push them above eligibility thresholds or reduce their benefits. Similar marriage penalties exist in other means-tested programs like Medicaid and housing assistance.  These penalties were not intentionally designed to disadvantage married couples, but emerged from efforts to target benefits to the neediest while treating similar households fairly. Still, as a result, “if the typical single mom marries a typical working man, they will lose their means-tested government benefits,” Hall explained. Some policies, like the child tax credit, largely avoid this problem by setting income thresholds high enough that most married couples keep their benefits. Food stamps take a different approach — treating all households the same whether couples are married or just living together. While research is mixed on how well people understand these various penalties, there is some evidence they influence behavior. An American Family Survey from 2015 reported that 31 percent of Americans said they know someone who did not marry for welfare-related reasons. A more recent survey from the Sutherland Institute in Utah found that 10 percent of safety net program recipients reported deciding not to marry to avoid losing benefits. A 2022 analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that, without marriage penalties, 13.7 percent more low-income single mothers would marry each year, and 7.5 percent more would be married by age 35. The study suggests these women typically do marry, but penalties might delay tying the knot. Testing the theory Some of the strongest evidence for the marriage-fertility connection comes from European programs in the 1970s and 1980s. Studies of policy experiments in Austria that involved cash payments to married couples and in Sweden with broader access to widow pensions revealed how government incentives could influence marriage rates and subsequent fertility patterns. The subsidies proved successful at getting couples who might otherwise have postponed or forgone marriage to make it official. Importantly, these “incentivized” marriages were roughly as stable as unsubsidized ones, suggesting that policy was able to influence timing for couples already oriented toward commitment. As Lyman Stone, a conservative pronatalist demographer, put it, “Turns out people just need a nudge to say ‘yes’ to the person they’re probably gonna marry anyway.” The fertility effects were nuanced. While marriages influenced by government subsidies had lower fertility rates than traditional, unsubsidized marriages, they still saw significantly higher birth rates than unmarried couples.   But these European examples stand in contrast to American experience, where US programs aimed at promoting marriage have historically shown little success. And even if policymakers could effectively encourage more marriage, the relationship between marriage and fertility isn’t straightforward everywhere. India has maintained nearly universal marriage rates, even as fertility rates have sharply declined. Dean Spears, the director of the Population Wellbeing Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin, notes that India’s marriage age has also remained relatively stable, with birth rates shrinking even among women who marry before age 25. Spears is far more skeptical that we can “nudge” people into getting married, and suggests we might be confusing cause and effect entirely. In an interview with Vox, he compared it to mistaking reduced exercise as a cause rather than a symptom of poor health. Both declining marriage and fertility rates might instead be responding to deeper social and economic shifts — from rising opportunity costs for mothers to shifting beliefs about family life. Alice Evans, a gender inequality scholar at King’s College London, studies how economic independence and reduced stigma around being single have transformed modern relationships. Her research shows people have become more selective about romantic partners, with some choosing to stay uncoupled if compatible partners prove elusive.  Evans believes we need better research not only on how modern life — such as social media and video games — affects relationship formation, but also on how marriage and marriage-related policies affect decisions to have children. The price of reform Conservatives see marriage penalty reform as a practical path forward, even though there isn’t decisive research showing that it would significantly affect marriage rates, let alone fertility. The proposal appeals partly because it could advance multiple goals at once. For those already wanting to see more marriage and childbearing on cultural and religious grounds, fixing the penalties offers a way to promote both. That it appears less expensive than creating new programs like universal child care makes it doubly attractive. The political challenges, however, are still substantial. Conservative economist Robert Cherry, who has worked on marriage penalty proposals for two decades, told Vox that truly eliminating these penalties could cost between $100 billion to $150 billion. More modest reforms to reduce but not entirely eliminate marriage penalties might still cost upward of $40 billion, he said.  Some progressive policy experts see a solution that lies in deprioritizing traditional family structure. Matt Bruenig, founder of the left-wing People’s Policy Project, argues the technical fix is to just tax everyone on their personal income rather than using household income. While he supports eliminating marriage penalties to keep things fair for everyone, he’s skeptical they play a major role in declining birth rates. Perhaps more fundamentally, there’s been little evidence of political will to address these penalties. When Republican lawmakers first considered proposals for the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), they explored eliminating the head of household filing status, another benefit that carries significant penalties for married couples. But the prospect of making some single mothers worse off proved too unpalatable for lawmakers to move forward with the idea. The political landscape may shift as lawmakers prepare to revisit the expiring TCJA next year. Donald Trump ran for president on boosting birth rates, and has already elevated prominent pronatalists like Elon Musk into his new administration. His incoming vice president, JD Vance, has also placed falling fertility rates high on the conservative agenda. Pronatalism gaining influence in conservative politics could lead not only to removing existing marriage penalties but also to actively incentivizing marriage through new subsidies, as Hungary did. Any policy response will need to address not only billion-dollar price tags but also deeper questions about whether the government should, or even can, try to steer such personal decisions in modern America.

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Inside a farm that raises turkeys for Jennie-O, the second largest US turkey producer. | Photo courtesy of Kecia Doolittle Editor’s note: This story was originally published on November 22, 2023, and reflects events that took place that year. We’re republishing it in its original form this week in advance of Thanksgiving. Late into the night on November 2, a few animal rights activists opened an unlocked barn door and stepped foot into a sea of turkeys living in gruesome conditions. It was one of several barns at a sprawling factory farming operation in Owatonna, Minnesota, that raises turkeys for Jennie-O, the country’s second-largest turkey producer and this year’s supplier to the annual White House turkey pardon ceremony.  “We documented a lot of really horrific health issues,” activist Kecia Doolittle, one of the investigators, told Vox. “It was about as bad as you can imagine.”  They found numerous turkeys who were dead and rotting, Doolittle said, and many who had trouble walking. There were also live birds pecking at dead birds, and dozens of birds with visible wounds — each a sign of cannibalism, a persistent problem in turkey farming. Doolittle also alleges there were a number of turkeys who were immobilized and unable to access food and water. In a letter to Steele County’s attorney and local law enforcement, Bonnie Klapper — a former assistant US attorney advising Doolittle — said the conditions are a violation of Minnesota’s animal cruelty law, which stipulates that “No person shall deprive any animal over which the person has charge or control of necessary food, water, or shelter.” (Minnesota is one of the few states that don’t exempt agricultural practices from their animal cruelty statute.)   “It smelled terrible,” Doolittle said. The air made her throat burn, likely due to high ammonia levels from the turkeys’ waste, which gives the birds eye and respiratory issues.  The activists found a sign on the property that read, “Jennie-O Turkey Store cares about turkeys — you should, too!” “Jennie-O Turkey Store takes the welfare of the animals under our care seriously and has robust animal care standards throughout our supply chain,” a spokesperson from Hormel Foods, Jennie-O’s parent company, told Vox via email. “We conduct routine audits at our facilities to ensure that our standards are being met with animal-handling practices and policies set forth by the National Turkey Federation and the American Veterinary Medical Association.” Doolittle rescued two of the birds — whom she later named Gabriel and Gilbert — and took them to veterinarians in Wisconsin, who urged her to euthanize Gilbert. “They both had really severe infections, they both had parasites,” Doolittle said, but Gilbert was in especially bad shape, with a wound under his wing, an infection on his face, and pecking wounds on part of his genitalia.  But Doolittle wanted to give him a chance to recover. Both birds were treated and given a combination of antibiotic, pain relief, and antiparasitic drugs; Gabriel is on the mend, while Gilbert’s condition remains touch and go.  Sherstin Rosenberg, a veterinarian in California and executive director of a sanctuary for rescued poultry birds, wrote in a veterinary opinion that Gabriel and Gilbert’s condition “suggests serious animal welfare problems” in Jennie-O’s facility. The findings, while disturbing, are common across the turkey industry. Numerous animal welfare groups have found similar conditions at operations run by Jennie-O’s competitors — even the ones that brand themselves as more humane. That’s because turkey farming is incredibly uniform, with companies using generally the same practices and the same breed — the Broad Breasted White turkey — that’s been bred without regard for their suffering. How the poultry industry broke the turkey Like everything else in the US — cars, homes, cruise ships — the turkey has become supersized.  The poultry industry has made turkeys so big primarily through selective breeding. The Broad Breasted White turkey, which accounts for 99 out of every 100 grocery store turkeys, has been bred to emphasize — you guessed it — the breast, one of the more valuable parts of the bird. These birds grow twice as fast and become nearly twice as big as they did in the 1960s. Being so top-heavy, combined with other health issues caused by rapid growth and the unsanitary factory farming environment, can make it difficult for them to walk. Another problem arises from their giant breasts: The males get so big that they can’t mount the hens, so they must be bred artificially. Author Jim Mason detailed this practice in his book The Ethics of What We Eat, co-authored with philosopher Peter Singer. Mason took a job with the turkey giant Butterball to research the book, where, he wrote, he had to hold male turkeys while another worker stimulated them to extract their semen into a syringe using a vacuum pump. Once the syringe was full, it was taken to the henhouse, where Mason would pin hens chest-down while another worker inserted the contents of the syringe into the hen using an air compressor. Workers at the farm had to do this to one hen every 12 seconds for 10 hours a day. It was “the hardest, fastest, dirtiest, most disgusting, worst-paid work” he had ever done, Mason wrote. In stressful, crowded environments, turkeys can be aggressive and peck one another, and even commit cannibalism. Instead of giving turkeys more space and better conditions, producers mutilate them to minimize the damage. They cut off a quarter to a third of their beaks, part of their toes, and their snoods — those fleshy protuberances that hang over their beaks — all without pain relief. Turkeys are excluded from federal laws meant to reduce animal suffering during transport to the slaughterhouse and during slaughter itself, so you can imagine — or see for yourself — how terribly they’re treated in their final hours. According to the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute, the Jennie-O slaughter plant near the farm Doolittle investigated was cited nine times in 2018 by the US Department of Agriculture for turkeys who’d been mutilated by malfunctioning equipment. Strangely, despite the horrific reality of turkey farming, we still use the animal as a symbol of giving thanks. Nowhere does the song and dance of celebrating turkeys while we torture them feel more disconcerting than at the White House’s annual turkey pardon.  The mixed message of the White House turkey pardon Every Thanksgiving, the US president “pardons” a turkey or two in what is essentially a PR stunt for the turkey industry, as the birds are selected by the chair of the National Turkey Federation, an industry trade association. This year, that was Steve Lykken, president of Jennie-O. The two turkeys selected for this year’s pardon — named Liberty and Bell — could have ended up among the 46 million or so birds on Thanksgiving tables this year. Instead, they were transported from Minnesota, the country’s top turkey-producing state, to Washington, DC, in a stretch black Cadillac Escalade. “They’re on their way in a pretty lavish coach,” Lykken told Minnesota Public Radio. The annual story makes for feel-good if hammy coverage by the nation’s largest news organizations, but it papers over the darkness of American factory farming — including not just the animal cruelty but also the dangerous working conditions at slaughterhouses, environmental pollution, and unfair treatment of turkey contract farmers. The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the Jennie-O investigation video. This year, industry is especially looking forward to the pardon amid the devastating bird flu. The disease, which has been resurging this fall, has resulted in the killing of 11.5 million potentially infected turkeys since early 2022. Increasingly, producers are killing the birds in the most brutal fashion imaginable, deploying a method called “ventilation shutdown plus” that uses industrial heaters to kill them via heatstroke over the course of hours.  “To have something that’s fun, that can draw positive attention to our industry, is very welcomed” in light of the outbreak, Ashley Kohls, executive director of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association, told Minnesota Public Radio about this year’s pardon. This week, Liberty and Bell will be moved to the University of Minnesota to live out the rest of their lives. If the turkeys knew what went on there, they might not want to go: The university helped build the state’s turkey industry and still conducts research on turkeys to ensure the industry’s success. The university’s interim president formerly served as the president of Jennie-O and the CEO of Hormel, its parent company.  Meanwhile, Doolittle’s pardoned turkeys, Gabriel and Gilbert, assuming both survive, will spend the rest of their lives at an animal sanctuary, showing humans what these birds can be like when allowed to live on their own terms. “They’re just the most curious, loving, intelligent guys,” Doolittle said. A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!

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